All the Quilts; All the Time

It's perfectly normal for me to have many quilts on the go, especially since I tend to work on a quilt on and (mostly) off over at least a few years, bringing it out and packing it away for each new session. But this week I've taken it to a whole new level.

I'm sure this is the first time I've had four different quilts out and going, at the same time! Phew.

It started with an idea I had for the back of my Merrily Christmas quilt. I think I've mentioned that I wanted to make a second top to put on the back instead of a plain back. I'm not going to have many Christmas quilts about so I may as well get double duty out of this one. :)

I came across this book at the thrift store when I was visiting my mom:

and I was intrigued. Soon after I had the idea to sew up the words of the carol Joy to the World. Not so long after that, I was well on my way!

I really enjoy the improvisation of the process. The process uses strips of fabric in various widths and you build the letters up step by step, no measuring or figuring. This is my work station:

Sewing on the left, cutting/trimming in the middle, and ironing on the right, plus all the strips laid out on the parts of the ironing board I don't need to press on. Everything close and convenient. I did start to make myself stand up for pressing just so I would move around more. (I just read a book on ergonomics so it's still running through my mind.)

Making the letters is a prime opportunity to do some leader/ender sewing. The idea with leader/enders is that when you get to the end of a seam on the main project where you can't follow with another piece, you sew a seam of the secondary project. It works better to start sewing a seam when there's fabric under the needle and it saves on thread too, if you're counting that.

Well, as soon as I saw the Plaidish quilt pattern on Instagram, I knew I would be making it. You can click the link to see some samples--it's made from scraps and uses light, medium, and dark values to make a sort of plaid pattern.

The pattern was offered for free, so I downloaded it right away. Following the cutting instructions, I went through all of my scrap stash and started cutting pieces.

There are three different blocks and each requires three or four pieces so I kept them all organized in jars and whatever containers I could find while I was cutting (including an empty Kleenex box!) I got all of the pieces except a few of the dark squares from my smaller scraps! That's a win right there.

I put everything in a cookie sheet and set it by my machine so I could sew a seam whenever there was a gap in the main project.

 I had laid out some of the pieces to see if there was any way to organize the colours

but determined that with this many colours, it was just going to have to be random. But I couldn't do it all random. After sewing pairs together (like a rectangle or square to a narrow strip), I did some planning of what would be sewn to what. I wanted to maximize the contrast and not have the same fabric together in the same block.

I'm pretty far on this project by now. All of the A blocks and B blocks are sewn, and I'm working on the C blocks. Once the blocks are all sewn, I'll lay them all out to determine their placement. I'm sure I won't be able to put them together randomly.

Truth be told, I am really itching to get this one done; I'm excited by it. So sometimes I force myself to make some more letters just so I can piece more of these blocks! The letters take a lot more brain power and get tiring after a while, but having this project gets me fired up to go again the next time.

In the middle of July, I was getting a lot of quilting done on my bright stars on black quilt, including the borders, which obviously weren't quilted the way they were marked!

But then we had company coming and I thought that we might want to use the living room (where I was working) so I rolled it up and put it on a chair:

Which is were it has been sitting. I have the majority of the quilting done, but I was slowing down because I knew I couldn't get any further before I made the brightly coloured flange I was going to put along the binding.

Well. While I was going through the scraps for the Plaidish quilt, I came across a nice pile of leftover brights. So I started cutting them up too.

They are mostly left over from the bright diamonds quilt I made, and the pieces that were already cut into strips were the width I was going to use. Boom. That saved me a lot of cutting. After getting it cut, I measured about 500 inches of strips, so that will be enough to go around my 95 inch square quilt. Next step is to decide what is going where and to piece the lengths together.

And. Then. I could no longer wait to work on my Lucy Boston quilt. I had bought the solids I wanted for the sashing in July with my sister. (She patiently helped me pick out the perfect shades of grey among the many options. And then once we had a group picked, I saw three on the shelf that blended much better. They had more of a brown tone than the others, which is what I was trying to avoid, but the blend was so good, I went with it. So a lot of fussy work to narrow it down and then a 3 second decision to go with this other set. I told you she was patient with me.)

Another reason this project was on hold was that I was debating using another system than cutting shapes with a template and gluing the fabric to paper shapes. Linda Franz has a system she calls Inklingo where you print lines on the fabric for cutting and for sewing. This way you can sew the pieces together without the steps of gluing it to paper and removing the paper later. It was very tempting because it's a very slick system. But the very fact that I hadn't gotten to it was telling me that it was not the method for me. I enjoy the paper method.

So, I cut some strips and then cut some honeycombs:

I'm not going to cut them all out because I need over 1,300. I'll make them as I go. I got enough to start putting them on the first block,

 and just finished it last night.

One down, 55 to go.

I missed having a project to sew while sitting on the couch too brain-tired to sew more letters. And I missed working on these blocks. Besides, football starts tonight so I need some hand work to do! This project should be more than enough to keep me busy through the football season.